The Rainbow Factory Orb · 11:41am Dec 13th, 2013
Following up on that and the Motorwagon Orb, here is another offering from material written for my FoE: Stalliongrad roleplaying campaign. This time, I have a series of terminal entries, newspaper articles and a new memory orb. As before, the memory orb is written in second person, present tense as it is designed to be a game hand-out. Please note again that this is, at most, headcanon. It should not be considered canon, so nobody writing stories in that area needs to worry about conflict.
Enjoy. 
Terminal Entries
The following messages were found scattered across several still-active terminals within the "new" Sparkle~Cola bottling plant in Stalliongrad.
Entry #123 (Re: Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 10,000)
From: Conner
To: Volte FaceHello.
Thank you for your interest in purchasing six of our limited Super Speedy Cider Squeezy Ten-Thousands (special order only). Your harvesting motorwagons are currently being built. We estimate nor more than ten weeks for the order to be filled.
As for your additional inquiries about industrial-sized cider-squeezing vats, I have personally passed your request on to my father. Our business contracts are for motorwagons, not heavy machinery. But because our patents cover the original and upgraded press designs, I think something can be worked out.
I’ll be in touch. Enjoy your new motorwagons!
Conner
Entry #778 (Re: Clear Product Test #23)
From: Right Mind
To: Volte FaceThis is a disaster. Three of the fifty ponies in our test group have died from severe radiation-related illness. Two more suffered health complications from the dissolving of their stomach lining. All families have been compensated and informed of the strictness of Sparkle~Cola’s non-disclosure policies.
The formula should have been perfect. If there were health risks, they should have been negligible and easily written off, not lethal. I suspect the error may reside in a mixing error in one of the new vats.
We have had several worker complaints about the new vats, claiming that their operation is significantly counter-intuitive compared to the old ones. I recommend looking into salvaging the older system, off the record.
Entry #779 (Re: Clear Product Test #23)
From: Volte Face
To: Right MindThe problem sounds like operator error, not an issue with the new vats themselves. Consider the reputation of the supplier. These are the same vat technology used for weather-making in Cloudsdayle. The pegasi don’t seem to have a problem operating this system. Perhaps Pony Resources should look into hiring some. In the meantime, identify the pony who was operating the vats when the problem occurred and give that pony her walking papers. Report back to me once it is done.
It has come to my attention that you have also filed a complaint with the vat supplier. Might I remind you that there is no conscionable way we could continue to use the old vats after the accident? It would be morbid at best, and a public relations apocalypse if it ever got out. There is no point in rocking this particular boat. Expect to hear more about this at you next review.
Entry #783 (Re: Complaint #15467)
From: Service Department, Las Pegasus Industrial
To: Right Mind (costumer ID #3215)Thank you for contacting our complaint department.
The company is not responsible for injuries sustained from recklessness or misuse of our product. Our legal department has concluded that drinking irradiated beverages qualifies under this statute.
Newspaper Articles
The following newspaper articles were found collected and preserved in an administrators desk in the Stalliongrad Sparkle~Cola plant.
The Standard
“Big Industry Joins Rebuilding Effort” by Gabby Gums
More than half a dozen nation-wide Equestria companies have thrown their bits and their reputations into the effort to rebuild and revitalize war-torn Stalliongrad after the end of the Zebra Occupation. Good Pony has promised to make Stalliongrad the new center of its manufacturing, promising a massive boost to jobs and the devastated local economy, while large corporations like Four Stars seek to hedge out local companies for the rights to major Royal contracts.
But local businesses are also getting some outside help. Sparkle~Cola has promised to “invest locally”, including choosing Greener Pastures, a Stalliongrad architectural and construction company, to build a new factory. The newly created Ministry of Wartime Technology is focusing on providing subsidies to fledgling companies who are willing to choose Stalliongrad for… (More on page 23.)
The Royal Canterlot Voice
Dragon Over Hoofington
The Shadowbolts, lead by Rainbow Dash, engaged the dragon Brimstone over the skies of Hoofington last weekend as zebra forces managed their deepest strike into Equestria in the War’s thirteen year history. All rumors that the zebras have enlisted the aid of the dragons native to their homeland have been confirmed. Princess Luna vows to expand Equestria’s pegasus… (Continued on page 2.)
Equestrian Business Weekly
Can Lightning Strike Twice?
Industry rumors claim that Sparkle~Cola is attempting to duplicate the stroke of luck that, decades before, gave them now-Ministry Mare Fluttershy as a marketing icon for their world-beloved Sparkle~Cola carbonated beverage. According to a source who requested to remain unnamed, Sparkle~Cola has made entreaties to Rainbow Dash (Ministry Mare, leader of the Shadowbolts and heroine of Hoofington) to act as a spokesperson for a new product line. (More on page 5.)
The Royal Canterlot Voice
Princess Celestia to Visit Stalliongrad
Next Tuesday, announced the Royal Court, Princess Celestia will take an eight-hour stop-over at Stalliongrad on her way to the Sentinel. According to Her aids, while in Stalliongrad, the Princess intends to luxuriate in one of the city’s award-winning spas and to visit the seeding of Stalliongrad’s east-south-eastern fields. (Ever since Sparkle~Cola purchased the old battlefield east-south-east of Stalliongrad, drink-lovers everywhere have speculated that they intend to use the fields to grow an orchard for their new, mysterious, upcoming flavor… but if Celestia knows what they are planting, She’s keeping that secret close to Her breast.)
Princess Celestia’s trip to the Sentinel is the first step in a planned series of diplomatic meetings with the heads of each of the zebra tribes with will cumulate with personal audience with the Caesar… (Continued on page 3.)
The Standard
“The Death of Local Business” by Gabby Gums
Today marks the groundbreaking of the new Sparkle~Cola factory, located directly across the street from Sparkle~Cola’s now infamous “Rainbow Factory”. Less than a decade old, Rainbow Factory is now vacant, lifeless and decaying. The company CEO claims the old factory is slated to be gutted and used for storage, but in the face of public protests, many employees predict that it will be dismantled completely. The stigma of the site is enough that they would have trouble selling it, so they will probably pave it over and use it for employee parking. And with the death of the Rainbow Factory comes the death of the local architectural firm Greener Pastures.
Only a few years ago, Greener Pastures outbid Apple House Architecture for the design and construction of the now abandoned factory. Now, with fault for the accident that claimed the lives of sixteen ponies, including twelve pegasus foals, being laid at the hoof of their sub-par construction materials and engineering short-cuts, Greener Pastures has seen a mass exodus of prospective clients. The company has already begun filing for bankruptcy, and the national conglomerates are hovering like ravens eager to pick at the corpse.
Already, Apple House Architecture, now a subsidiary of Stable-Tec, has negotiated the rights to design and construction of the new, new Sparkle~Cola factory. Likewise, rights to the Stalliongrad mass transit project have been stripped from Greener Pastures and hoofed over to Four Stars, who is promising “great things for Stalliongrad’s future”.
Greener Pastures has attempted to divert the blame, claiming that they are victims and that the accident is the result of an inferior batch of concrete purchased from another local company.
The question this reporter has to ask is: should the deaths of those children be laid at the hooves of a local business trying desperately to stay afloat in a sea of nation-wide sharks? Or should that blood be on the hooves of Stable-Tec, Four Stars, and other companies who use their massive funds and market influence to murder independent, local businesses?
<-=======ooO The Rainbow Factory Orb Ooo=======->
The world reasserts itself bright, big and loud. Brilliant sunlight pours through multi-story windows that line the cheery interior of the Sparkle~Cola plant. The walls and ceiling are painted in friendly pastels, littered with images of sunshine and rainbows. And funny-looking, rainbow-striped apples.
Across the ceiling, a huge, rainbow-striped banner boasts an image of Rainbow Dash proclaiming: The Sparkle~Cola Rainbow Factory welcomes the Las Pegasus Elementary Honors Class!
And everything is big. At least from your host’s perspective – it has been a long time since you’ve seen the world through the eyes of a foal. And this is your first time being a pegasus. You are aware of the wings at your sides, and how your school backpack rubs against them. You can also feel your host’s slightly quickened heartbeat, and the tingling of her nerves – all the physical symptoms of her excitement, but without any of the emotional context, leaving the sensation vaguely dreadful.
“Class! Please, stay together,” a cheerful but slightly exasperated mare’s voice calls out. “No wandering!”
All around you, other pegasus children flock to take in the sights, sounds and smells around them. Your host spares a glance towards a mint-green pegasus colt with three bars of silver as his cutie mark. The colt wears a studiously bored expression and is talking with an equally unimpressed filly – the only two who aren’t in blatant awe of their surroundings.
“Now, my little ponies,” a smiling yellow stallion in a Sparkle~Cola vest with rainbow lapels asks, making himself heard over the herd. His voice increases with measured excitement with every word. “Who wants to see where the Zap-Apple cider is mixed to become Sparkle~Cola Rainbow!?”
The throng of pegasus colts and fillies cheer. All except three. Nearby, Silver Bars knickers snootily at his classmates, the filly next to him rolling her eyes. Your host, meanwhile, is silenced by an unpleasant chill, almost like cold mountain water had washed through her bones.
Somewhere nearby, something falls with a mighty crash, making your host jump.
“Chewing Gum!” the voice of the teacher cries out in exasperation. “I told you not to touch anything. Now stay with the group!”
“Sowwy, Miss Jubilee,” responds a repentant, overweight colt as he quickly puts down the remaining unbroken flask of a chemistry set. One of the ponies who quickly move in to clean up the glass bites the colt’s backpack and carries him over the shards on the floor.
“Hey, Ink Blot, you okay?” a nearby filly asks. It takes a moment to realize she is talking to your host. “You look kinda sick.”
“Yeah, it’s nothing…” your host says, turning back towards the other students as Chewing Gum scampers past. The tour guide is leading the class out across a catwalk suspended over multiple, giant mixing vats.
An orange pegasus colt with a chalk-grey mane begins flapping his little wings hard, and slowly lifts up from the catwalk for a better view. The filly next to your host mutters “show-off” under her breath.
Up ahead, you can hear the teacher ask, “Is that going to be a problem? Most of my students can’t fly yet.”
“What, the flying?” the tour guide asks, only to chuckle a moment later. “Oh, that? I wouldn’t worry. That’s rated for adults.”
A soft metal clang is barely audible above the din of the factory.
Your host moves towards the catwalk railing, looking down at the huge, chugging vats of rainbow-swirled liquid. Conveyor belts carry zap apples by the dozens towards the open-topped machinery, dumping them in. Your host’s eyes follow the conveyor belts back to large, windowed boxes with flashing green lights under placards that read: QUALITY CONTROL.
The other students have gotten a little ahead of her, listening to the guide describe the function and features of the Rainbow Factory vats. As the filly steps back from the railing, her eyes catch writing stamped into the metal: Max Load 12.
The tour continues, your host’s eyes darting around, the tingle of her nerves becoming unpleasant. Looking ahead and down, she notices a cable hanging down from the catwalk ahead. At the end, a chuck of concrete sways just over one of the vats.
The rest of the class had reached the far end of the catwalk, the metal platform jutting out over the vats that the smiling Sparkle~Cola guide is explaining regulates mixing in “the special ingredient that makes Sparke~Cola Rainbow that..."
The catwalk shifts a little. Another metal clang alerts the filly. She looks down, seeing the last metal segment of the catwalk separate from the one before, an inch gap forming then slamming shut. The filly hesitates a moment before joining the others. Unlike you, she doesn’t understand the architectural implications: the platform segments aren’t welded together. Instead, they slid together along a rail and held in place by tension.
“Ew!” Silver Bars complains, brushing concrete dust out of his mane. Your host looks up, her eyes widening as she takes in the cracks along the ceiling radiating out from the suspension cables’ bolts like a spider web. More concrete powder rains down. The catwalk shifts again. Her heart has begun to thump quickly in her breast.
Her eyes scan the ceiling and finds the chunk of missing concrete where one of the cables has already pulled free. Another wash of wet cold rushes through her veins.
Chewing Gum bumps into her from behind.
Your host panics.
“GET OFF THE CATWALK!” she screams, her wings beating furiously as she tries to scramble backwords over Chewing Gum. “IT’S GONNA FALL!”
“Inkie?” the filly next to you asks, fear rising in her own voice in reaction to Ink Blot’s clear terror.
“Everypony, calm down…”
“It’s not gonna fall, you idiot,” Silver Bars drolls, but the filly next to him is staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.
Your host tumbles over Chewing Gum, the colt crying out. The teacher is pushing her way through the crowd towards you. Several other students are beginning to panic, two of them running past you up the catwalk as you try to disentangle yourself from the overweight colt. Your wings as still beating terror, but they aren’t enough to lift you from the metal surface that has begun to sway with all the movement. Half a foot of space opens between the metal segments then begins to swing shut.
“Children, stay together!” the teacher calls out. “Ink Blot, you’re scaring everyone…”
Clang!
The mob of pegasus children erupts.
The end section of the platform sways harder, a pony-sized gap opens. One of the foals falls into it with a scream. The orange flying colt swoops down, grasping her by her tail to keep her from falling. You can hear the metal cables straining.
The catwalk swings back, crushing the foal, nearly bisecting her in a spray of blood.
The air is filled with screams. One of the children climbs up onto the railing and jumps for one of the conveyor belts, beating his wings in an attempt to jump further. His forehooves touch down on the belt and are knocked out from under him. His face hits the belt, bloodying it a moment before it dumps him into the vat of swirling rainbows.
The catwalk segment begins to sway out again, dropping the crushed filly’s body into the vat below. A terrible rending sound stampedes after a loud metallic twang one of the suspension cables tears free of the ceiling, whipping down to strike Miss Jubilee across the face. She collapses into the mass of panicking children. Concrete rains from the ceiling – not just dust, but chunks. One of them comes down on you host’s back.
Mercifully, the memory ends.
<-=======ooO Ooo=======->
Wow, still love your writing.
You certainly have a gift in writing.
I figured the incident had to be similar to how the Rainbow Factory story happened. I feel sorry for those foals who died.
Good memory orb, though I suspect that it was the tour guides fault.
Whoa... Just whoa...
"Gabby Gums"
Huh. Who took on that name? The Crusaders were kind of busy saving/condemning equinity.
In any case, I love these snippets. I do hope you collect them in a story at some point.
hey just had a weird idea, then quickly dropped it about the ending of FOE.
SPOILER kind of (if your like 25% in shouldn't ruin anything too terribly, just started skip it, heck skip this if not finished it even, just don't want to ruin the amazing fic for anyone)
OK so in the last chapter and what not, theirs 4 unmarked graves. i thought this to be either fallen in battle and protecting spikes cave near the end, or that of the mane 6. first i thought fluttershy accounted for and aj buried in the vault underneath the apple trees, so its the rest. but then i forgot and think twilight's body was kind of gone right? so that doesn't work now. so its falling fighters in the last major battle. oh well, was interesting to me to think on.
Hmm - perhaps it's my lack of architectural knowledge, but I'm having some difficulty picturing the design of that catwalk. Someone link me to a description with diagrams?
That said, I don't think I need to know how the catwalk works to understand that the designer who built it was a complete idiot. Okay, so the catwalk was collapsing. That part is the fault of the concrete supplier. The high tension cable smashing Jubilee's skull? Can't really say - the design shouldn't place that much tension on any one cable, but the bridge was already collapsing. But the bridge turning into a deathtrap, and guillotining ponies? What sort of designer allows for individual slats on the bridge to move independently? A _rope bridge_ works better than that.
Still, other than that, very nicely done.
And I do have to agree with Conner about the vats. The PR backlash from re-using those vats would be unimaginable. Although - since when was a drink that _melted your insides_ something that could result simply from _incorrectly mixing_ the recipe?
1602609
Not really. How often do you personally verify the architectural stability of a structure before using it? Specifically - structures built by certified architects, in places that don't have a reputation for shoddy building work?
1602788 I'm referring to the fact he ignored the sign, you don't you that shit without consequences.
1602788
Well, there is definitely reason to suspect at least one material supplier may not have had the best intentions for Equestria...
from The Motorwagon Orb
.
As for the other question, allow me to introduce "Perpetual Sunshine"!
ic.pics.livejournal.com/write_light/11965346/289448/289448_original.jpg
This, and products like Radithor, were the inspiration for Fallout's Nuka~Cola and, by extension, Sparkle~Cola.
I'm sorry KKat but there are a few lines here of the Orb I don't quite get.
“
The first is where I don't quite get what he's meaning here, "That's rated for adults" I feel like you skipped something there, it's out of context.
The second one, also doesn't have full context, it's like you missed something there? I don't get quite the meaning of that, could you perhaps help me understand a bit more about this?
1602830
Being up ahead, the teacher saw the "Max Load" notice before your host did and asked if the number of students would be a problem. The tour guide dismissed her worries, noting that the rating was based on adult ponies, not foals.
Oops. Fixed.
1602811
... wow. That slipped right by me - I can't believe I missed that.
Am I going to have to break out the whiteboards with the conspiracy charts on?
This really shouldn't surprise me.
And yet, somehow I just can't bring myself to believe it.
schockwellenreiter.de/images/doramad.jpg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste (Doramad Radioaktive Zahncreme) was produced in Germany by Auergesellschaft of Berlin from the 1920s through World War II.
The toothpaste was slightly radioactive because it contained small amounts of thorium obtained from monazite sands. Auergesellschaft used thorium and rare earths in making industrial products including mantles for gas lanterns; the toothpaste was produced as a byproduct. Its radioactive content was promoted as imparting health benefits, including antibacterial action and a contribution to strengthening the "defenses of teeth and gums".
Gotta get one of these...
Theres a Fo:E roleplaying game? Man, I miss eveything.
Wow, that's kind of brutal. Merciful end indeed.
Dang...I forgot how dark FO:E can be.
Goodness, when you write tragedy, its made too personal to brush off.
Now I'm off to find something to cheer me up.
Where get?
Catwalks above drangeous things, the desing of deaht. Litllepip warned you guys.
Wait, if we have this memory orb. That means Ink survived, right?!
Also, where are you plaing this Roleplay game? In a forum?
no
I wonder: what do you think about the weight of pegasi? I assume that they'd have to be a lower weight in order to fly. Unless it's just something like pegasus magic.
Awesome worldbuilding as always.
1603999
I've always thought it was a combination of physiology and magic.
I'm also curious on what Kkat's head-cannon is.
That was incredible! Oh man, I wish I had campaigns like that.
1603358 You'd think it would end in rainbows, but you'd be wrong!
Damn! That memory! And that name, inkblot, where have I heard it before?
Makes you wonder if the Enclave remembered this and did something similar to foals who couldn't fly, or criminals, or maybe even Dashite's that tried hiding above the clouds or something...
*grabs notebook and pen* Let's do this.
1603182 Why am I not suprised that this would make sense in FO:E or regular Fallout?
2424793 Because in FoE and Fallout games is radiation everywhere.
I have question for Kkat. Memory orb can be extracted only from living ponies right? So Inkie survived.